Category: Quotes

A book by a pro-choice author discusses how antiabortion extremist tactics lead to more medical students becoming abortion providers:

Since David Gunn’s death in March 1993, there has been a significant mobilization among pro-choice medical students across the country. “Medical Students for Choice,” a new national organization, has contacts in over 100 medical schools. One of its first activities was to circulate a petition (which ultimately gathered over 3000 signatures) among medical students all over the country, demanding that abortion training be a required component in OB/GYN residency programs.… In Response to the notorious “Bottom Feeders pamphlet, a compilation of vulgar jokes directed at abortion providers, which was recently mailed to medical students in the United States by an antiabortion group, medical students at the University of California at San Francisco raised funds that were donated to the National Abortion Federation.

In a letter to the publishers of the pamphlet, the UCSF students wrote, “If your intentions included intimidating future abortion providers… Then you failed. In fact, “Bottom Feeders” has sparked effective discussions on-campus about how to ensure access to safe, legal abortion for every woman who wants one.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995)  206 – 207

Is holding big media events outside abortion clinics during pickets counterproductive? It can be. According to an abortionist named Caleb Barrington:

“They [pro-lifers]would stage a picket at the office and would at the same time make it a media event. They would call the press, they would all arrive, and the next day I would get twice as many phone calls because people would know I was doing the abortions – so, in fact, they made my name known.”

Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 165

In 1972, the year before Roe versus Wade, a collection of 100 OB/GYN’s published an article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They expressed doubts about the legalization of abortion. Concern that women may want surgery that is not in their best interest, they said the following:

“For the first time, except perhaps for cosmetic surgery, doctors will be expected to do an operation simply because the patient asks that it be done.”

“A Statement on Abortion by One Hundred Professors of Obstetrics” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 112 (1972) 992 – 98

They realized that the doctor would be a mere technician, performing a service that women wanted without knowing their in-depth medical history or life circumstances. Perhaps these doctors envisioned clinics where women would wait in line and be aborted one after the other with the doctor only seeing his patients for several minutes on the operating table. Is this really conducive to good medical care?

So many women were having emotional problems after their abortions that Planned Parenthood, which always denies that post abortion trauma is real, finally had to address the issue.

Planned Parenthood website affiliate in Illinois about coping with an abortion

“You can say or yell “stop” whenever you have disturbing thoughts… if you find yourself fantasizing too often about what the child may have been like, you should substitute another fantasy: a baby crying because you have no time to give  it.”

Quoted in Valerie Meehan “Hidden Pain: Silent No More” The American Feminist, Winter 2002 to 2003

Meehan quotes from Theresa Burke, PhD “forbidden grief, the unspoken pain of abortion” written with David Reardon

Here are the results of some studies on abortion and the emotional aftermath:

154% higher risk of suicide. Another study of more than 173,000 American women who had abortions or carried to term found that, during the eight years after the pregnancy ended, women who aborted had a 154% higher risk of suicide than women who carried to term.

DC Reardon et. al., “Deaths Associated With Pregnancy Outcome: A Record Linkage Study of Low Income Women,” Southern Medical Journal 95(8):834-41, Aug. 2002.

Higher suicide risks for teens. Teen girls are 10 times more likely to attempt suicide if they have had an abortion in the last six months than girls who have not had an abortion, and 2-4 times more likely to commit suicide after abortion compared to adult women

B. Garfinkel, et al., “Stress, Depression and Suicide: A Study of Adolescents in Minnesota,” Responding to High Risk Youth (University of Minnesota: Minnesota Extension Service, 1986); M. Gissler, et. al., “Suicides After Pregnancy in Finland: 1987-94: register linkage study,” British Medical Journal, 313: 1431-1434, 1996; and N. Campbell, et. al., “Abortion in Adolescence,” Adolescence, 23:813-823, 1988. See the “Teen Abortion Risks” Fact Sheet at www.unfairchoice.info/resources.htm for more information.

Five-fold higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse. Excluding women with a prior history of substance abuse, those who abort their first pregnancy are 5 times more likely to report subsequent drug and alcohol abuse vs. those who give birth.

DC Reardon, PG Ney, “Abortion and Subsequent Substance Abuse,” American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse 26(1):61-75, 2000.

For more studies on the mental fallout from abortions, go here.

For testimonies and stories of post-abortion women, go here. 

In a well-known pro-choice book,an author who observed in an abortion clinic told of the abortion decision of a young women who already had a two year old. Lamenting the fact that she could not have her baby and stay financially afloat, the woman said:

“This is my decision but not my choice.”

Chalker R. and Downes, C. “A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486” (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York 1992) Quoted in an essay by Catherine Spencer

The truth is, many women have abortions not because they are deciding without qualms that they don’t want a baby, but, rather, that they see themselves in a hopeless situation, and feel they have no other choice. Or, just as often, they are pressured by other people (usually the baby’s father) into having the abortion.

To read more about coerced abortions, go here. 

Should just anyone be allowed to perform an abortion, or should only doctors be allowed to perform them? Surprisingly, there are no laws mandating that those who perform abortions must be doctors in many states.

Until recently, in Arizona, non-doctors performed abortions at Planned Parenthood. A simple nursing degree is all they had- and more than they needed to operate legally.

This all changed with the 2009 Abortion Consent Act.

The law states the following,. according to an article by Steven Ertelt:

The law makes it so Arizona will require a notarized parental signature before an abortion can be performed on a minor child, women will be provided with full and accurate information by a doctor in person at least 24 hours before an abortion, medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs and non-doctors will not be permitted by law to perform surgical abortions.

Steven Ertelt “Arizona Abortions Drop 30% After Pro-Life Law Takes Effect” LifeNews.com 10/12/11

Rather than comply with the law, Planned Parenthood stopped performing abortions at seven locations. Apparently, doctors were not performing the surgeries on women in these clinics.

Roe Vs. Wade was supposed to protect women against unqualified abortionists. I wonder how many women knew that their surgery was being done by someone who did not have a medical degree?

Read about abortion’s dangers here.

The law led to a 30% drop in the number of abortions in the state

Note: One Planned Parenthood nurse, Beth Otterstein, who performed abortions before being banned from doing so said the following after the law passed:

“I’m very sure we’re going to see illegal abortions crop up, which can be very serious because they can lead to deaths”

Rachel Jimenez “At Flagstaff Clinic, Women Seeking Abortions Told to go to Phx” Tuscon Sun Sentinel October 4, 2011

Only Planned Parenthood could claim that a law requiring women to have their surgery done by competent physicians would lead to unsafe abortions. I wonder if they listen to themselves.